#73: Viridiana

Viridiana (Bunuel, 1961)

Viridiana

All but one of the Bunuel films I've seen has the same central thesis: "Catholicism is stupid". Viridiana is no exception. It's a great movie, but it could probably afford to be a little more subtle and less flippant. (Seriously, I don't know what those nuns did to Bunuel when he was a child, but it must have been terrible.) Viridiana is a nun acolyte who's invited to her dying uncle's estate. Her mother superior orders her to go because he's her last living relative. When she's about to leave, her uncle doesn't want her to, so he drugs her with the intent of raping her (Thereby disqualifying her as a nun so she can't go back to the convent). He decides against raping her at the last minute, but when she wakes up, tells her he did. Then when she's about to leave, tells the truth, that he didn't. Viridiana, because of this imagined sin that wouldn't have been within her control even if it did happen, is too ashamed to stay at the convent. When her uncle then kills himself, she decides it's her calling to go stay at her uncle's estate. She also finds out he had a bastard son, who also then moves into the estate.

The son is a modern man with very secularized moral beliefs. He's lustful and indulgent in modern pleasures, which according to Bunuel's idea of catholicism makes him sinful, but throughout the character he's the most noble, and also the most practical character. As soon as he moves in he uses has electricity installed in the house. Viridiana on the other hand is portrayed as well meaning but laughably impractical. She can't do a simple task such as milking a cow, and uses her uncle's fortune to bring in a bunch of street bums. In dealing with these street bums, she assumes they will all behave like good Christians just because she's being generous. Her attitude toward them is naive and maternalistic (As Bunuel sees all Catholicism). Later when they're left alone on the ranch for a day, they break into the house and, intoxicated by the rare opportunity to indulge in luxury, ravage the place. As they're eating from the kitchen table, they pose like the Last Supper, just because they know they're in a Bunuel film.

The film works well as a critique of Bunuel's catholic upbringing, but as previously mentioned, it's a bit too flippant and unsubtle.

Rating: **** 1/2 / 5

24/101

Others:

Cinema Paradiso **** / 5

The missing influential link between Fellini and Almodovar. The film is broken into three parts, one where the main charater is a young child, one where he's a teenager, and one where he's a middle aged man. The first part reminds me of Amarcord, and the last part reminds me of the 2009 Almodovar film Broken Embraces. The story follows a boy who loves film and learns to run a film projector when he's a child. You also see the transformation of his village. In the 50s the cinema is the only entertainment in the whole village and the community revolves around it. The village seems quaint and rural, whereas when he comes back in the 80s, you see highways and all kinds of modern buildings, and nobody visits the cinema anymore. The main idea of the film seems to be, whatever may have happened in the past, you need to leave it in the past and live in the present, no matter how much you may have wished you did things differently.

Ajami **** / 5

The film takes part in five chapters. The first four seem scattershot, jumping around between storylines and timeframes, but in the last chapter you realize it was all to drop pieces of information here and there to set up possibly the most depressing twist ending of all time.

Shutter Island ** / 5

Pretty decent movie, but it's so conspiratorially dense at the beginning and so obvious everyone is lying, you stop caring what the resolution is. Then the twist ending doesn't make very much sense.

Next: Intolerance, Double Indemnity
Coming soon to theaters: A Prophet, Ghost Writer, Green Zone